Coda
by Mynuet
Summary: My own take on what might happen after the series. The rating is set high just in case I need it to be, later on. Pairings will become apparent, or you can ask me.
1. Default Chapter

Author's Note: I loved the Fruits Basket anime. I finished watching episode 26 and immediately wanted to start writing, pairing off people and exploring what-happens-next. Then I started talking about ideas with the one other FB fan that I know, and she pointed out that the manga has a lot of plot elements that the anime doesn't, including pairing off some people I had plans for. So, I thought about, tried to see if I could find translations or summaries or something that would be the equivalent of reading all the manga and knowing all there was to know about it... And didn't find much that would put together a coherent picture. Rather than never write, though, I decided I would go ahead and pretend the manga did not exist in the universe that this fic takes place in. Therefore, all I have to worry about is the anime continuity, and not making guesses at what the manga has to say. I apologize in advance for any apoplexies this attitude may cause, along with the fact that, being a gaijin and not having a beta reader, I am bound to make mistakes in the use of honorifics and the way things work in Japan. And now, our feature presentation.  
  
Coda  
  
by Sharlene  
  
  
  
Tohru Honda felt the brake pedal go all the way to the floor and saw the same intersection where her mother had died looming in front of her and felt she was going to die. There was a clarity in the moment, a perfect calm that seemed to exist outside of time. She said a prayer, not for survival but of thanks for all that she had been given in life and that her death would happen without anyone else being hurt. Her hands automatically worked the wheel in the way she had been taught, but she felt no real hope of survival, and was prepared for the outcome. At least she would see her beloved mother again.  
  
The impact was horrifying, the noise magnified until it was beyond sound, a physical presence. Oddly, she noted that the radio had paused for a moment and then resumed, the singer cheerily exhorting her to do her best and live life to the fullest. She reflexively muttered the words along with the singer while she leaned back on the headrest and closed her eyes, trying to pull herself together enough to think. She was dizzy, and thirstier than she could ever remember being, but otherwise did not feel hurt. She couldn't feel her body at all.  
  
Something in the back of her mind reminded her that she had been sent on an emergency errand, to bring the package on the seat next to her to Akito Souma immediately. It was important, she thought, I have to do it or everybody will be disappointed in me. The door wouldn't open at first, but she shoved it with all the strength of her desperation and it gave. Fumbling, she undid the catch of her seatbelt and retrieved the package before stepping out of the car.  
  
She had taken three steps before she fell, three wobbling, uneven steps born of pure strength of will before her leg buckled and collapsed and would not hold her up. She crawled then, dragging her useless leg behind her, not feeling the bite of the asphalt into her skin as she used one hand and one leg to propel herself forward. A voice called out to her and then was lost in the noise of an explosion, and she felt a wave of heat on her back before she fell, her mind unable to cope any longer.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
"How is she?" The waiting room was crowded, full to bursting with the people who loved Tohru Honda. It was Yuki who had spoken, his voice soft to hide the tremble he knew would be in it. Kyou was standing beside him, his tense form almost vibrating from the desire to shout, to punch something, to DO something other than stand here and wait to see if the sun really had fallen out of the sky. The rest of the Soumas were scattered around the room. Kisa's face buried in Haru's chest while her hand was tucked firmly into Hiro's. Ayame sat as close to Hatori as he could, occasionally patting Momiji's hand and slightly envying the small boy's ability to curl up in Hatori's lap and bawl. Ritsu sat next to Kagura, sobbing and apologizing to the world for not having been in Tohru's place while Kagura patted his hand and kept up a steady stream of tissues and shushing noises. Shigure sat slightly apart from the rest of the family, his elbows resting on spread knees, his face buried in his hands.  
  
The doctor looked up from the form he had been studying. "Who are Suki Hanajima and Arisa Uotani?"  
  
The two girls stood and walked forward stiffly, holding hands against the tension of waiting to hear what the doctor had to say. The yankee was the one who spoke, her tone rough as she said, "That's us. How is she?"  
  
"Very lucky." The doctor's tone was sympathetic but professional as he said, "Her leg was broken by the impact, and that's the worst of the damage, compounded by her attempt to walk on it when fleeing the wreckage. Several ribs were cracked on impact with the seat belt, but none were broken. She has various burns on the back of her legs from the explosion, mostly minor, as well as some bruising and lacerations. We'll be watching her for concussion overnight, as she suffered some head trauma during impact, but she regained consciousness for a few minutes and was quite lucid. Her main concern was that someone named Akito-san get his package."  
  
A ripple of reaction went through the assembled Juunishi, but the doctor went on. "There are some procedures I would like to administer and tests I would like to run, but I need authorization. Since the two of you are listed as her next of kin, you alone can sign the necessary paperwork."  
  
Hana's knees weakened at the words 'next of kin', but she said firmly, "Whatever is necessary for Tohru-kun must be done."  
  
The doctor noted, then looked slightly embarrassed as he handed over a stack of forms. "Ms. Honda did not have a medical insurance card with her, so one of the things we will need is a guarantee of payment--"  
  
"The best of care, whatever she needs, it will be paid for." Yuki spoke firmly, his voice stronger than it had been, now that he knew Tohru would survive. One thing about being the rat, and the son of parents who had died too young. Money was not an issue, and never would be.  
  
The doctor nodded gravely. "That will help immensely."  
  
"I want to see Tohru-kun! When can I see her?" Momiji looked at the doctor with all the pleading and heartbreak and cuteness that he could pour into his eyes.  
  
"I'm afraid she can't have visitors until she's transferred to a room, and then she should only see a few people at a time to keep her from overtaxing herself." He patted Momiji on the head, thoughts of his own little ones making him speak more gently. "I'm sure she would love to see you very soon, but you must make sure to be sweet to her, yes?"  
  
"I will! I love Tohru-kun!" Momiji smiled brightly and might have said more if Hatori's hand hadn't descended onto his shoulder, calming the flighty rabbit. The two exchanged a look and Momiji nodded and returned to sit next to Ayame. Hatori and the doctor stepped apart from the group to converse in low tones, and some of the tension in the room ebbed as everyone in the room let themselves believe that Tohru would really be all right.  
  
"Who is Akito?" Hana's voice was still soft, but those who were used to her speaking tones recognized the harshness of it. She looked around, her eyes seeming to spark as she concentrated on Shigure. "You know something. You know why she was hurt."  
  
Shigure looked up tiredly, shaking his head. "I know nothing, but I suspect." He took a deep breath and pushed his hair away from his eyes. "I suspect I should have made sure Tohru-kun go to a college far away."  
  
Hana glided over to where he sat and took his chin firmly in her hand, pulling his face to where she could look into his eyes. Her own eyes glowed violet as she looked at him intently, then abruptly dropped her hand and turned away. "We will talk about this later."  
  
Gracefully, ignoring the stares from the others in the room, she stalked to where Uo-chan was struggling with the paperwork while sniping half- heartedly at Kyou about nothing in particular. Hatori intercepted her, and spoke to both of the girls in his customary calm tones. "Since the two of you are officially her family, you will have to give permission before any of us are allowed to see her, and I would need permission to see her in my professional capacity. Doctor Kawadoki has said that she can receive visitors now if I supervise her condition and limit the number of people in the room to no more than two at once."  
  
The yankee brushed her bangs aside and looked at him levelly. "Hana and I will go in and see her now, and you can follow. We'll discuss the rest after we see her." Hatori nodded, thinking that he'd never felt so much under judgment and in danger of failing.  
  
"Oi! Why do you go in first?" Kyou seemed to be gearing up for some shouting when Yuki glared at him.  
  
"Stupid cat! They go in first because if they don't give permission, we can't go in at all. They're officially Honda-san's family since her grandfather died." Yuki almost welcomed the chance to fight with Kyou, to do something normal when his brain was screaming at him that everything wasn't.  
  
Kyou made a growling noise, but did not interfere with the girls leaving the room with Hatori. "We should be her family." Blushing slightly, the boy threw himself down into a nearby chair and scowled at everyone in the world.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Tohru was awake when they reached her room, but just barely. She tried to sit up and Uo-chan was instantly at her side, scolding her for making the effort while arranging pillows for propping her up with. Hana walked calmly to the far side of the bed, pulled up a chair and held Tohru's hand. Then and only then did she allow herself the luxury of a single tear, her voice wobbling as she said, "We almost lost our Tohru-chan."  
  
Tohru smiled, which somehow made her seem even more frail while it also made her look more like her normal self. "I was very lucky that Mom was looking out for me, but I'm sorry to have worried everyone."  
  
Uo-chan took Tohru's other hand and pressed it, briefly. "Don't be sorry, just get better so that I can scold you later." Tohru laughed and said yes, and the Uo-chan continued. "In the meantime, this guy says he's a doctor, and the waiting room's been invaded by Soumas. You want them here or gone?"  
  
"Oh, Hatori-san! Thank you so very much for coming, although I'm sorry to trouble you." The girl struggled to pull herself together, to be the genki girl who kept house for renegade Soumas.  
  
"Just lie down, Honda-san. You can be the least trouble by resting and getting well." He moved up to take her temperature, check her vital signs, and generally do useless medical checks to reassure himself that she really was going to get better.  
  
"Yes, of course." Tohru sank back to rest on the pillows. "Is everyone else okay? Did Akito-san get the medicine he needed right away?" His hesitation was slight, but enough. "He didn't need medicine at all, did he?"  
  
"Honda-san. Akito-san has had much pain in his short life, and it makes him do things, things that are wrong but he cannot control himself to stop." Hatori sighed and touched the eye that had been hurt so long ago, in another of Akito's rages. That time had cost him his sight in that eye, and any chance of following his dream to become a surgeon. This time had almost cost Tohru her life.  
  
Uo-chan looked at the haze of tension on Hana's face, and the wounded, wondering look on Tohru's and stood abruptly. "You, Doctor. Go sit down in the corner while I go get the first batch of Soumas. Hana and I will stay to help supervise."  
  
He wasn't given time to protest that this wasn't the agreement. Her long skirt flapped behind her as she walked to the elevators that would take her to the waiting room. She allowed herself one moment, just one moment in the privacy of the elevator where no one would see, to bite her knuckle and feel the pain of almost losing her best friend, in the same way and the same place she had lost the mother figure she'd adored. Then she pulled herself together and strode from the elevator in her accustomed loping strides.  
  
"Oi, Prince, Kyon-Kyon. You first. The rest of you sort it out so you don't come more than two at a time." She turned briskly on her heel and went back to the elevators, leaving them to catch up. They rode in silence, only broken on the threshold of Tohru's room. "You upset her and all of you will be kept out."  
  
The boys nodded and filed silently into the room. 


	2. Conversation

It was quiet. Yuki and Kyou had been ordered to attend a meeting of the juunishi, and Hatori had further ordered both of them to get some rest afterward. It had been two weeks since Tohru's accident, two miserably endless weeks of seeing the sweet and cheerful girl lying in a hospital bed and barely speaking. All of the people who cared about her had stood vigil at her bedside, at first fighting over the privilege.  
  
One such fight had been going on, Black Haru fighting against Kyou for making Risa cry, the yankee yelling at both of them to be quiet, when the room had filled with the sound of Tohru's sobs. Hanajima had at that moment returned from running errands and evicted everyone with a single glare before taking Tohru in her arms and rocking her like a desolate child.  
  
Eventually, the goth girl had come out to rake them all with a contemptuous gaze. In the quiet and flat manner that her listeners recognized as rage, Hana outlined the new schedule and rules for visitation. Hana and Uotani would be allowed at all times, as official relatives. Hatori would be allowed all the privileges befitting Tohru's doctor. Yuki and Kyou would be allowed to count as family provided that they did not disturb Tohru. The rest would be limited to the hospital's normal visiting hours, despite the luxury of a private room.  
  
The waves of electric hostility pouring from the dark girl, combined with the shame of having made Tohru cry, convinced everyone to accept the conditions without a fuss. The days had quickly settled into a routine, but spending every available waking moment in a hospital was taking its toll on all of them.  
  
"It's almost too quiet without Kyou-kun and the prince." Uotani commented as she pulled a chair up to face Hatori.  
  
He looked up and put aside the medical journal he had been staring at. He still wasn't sure, despite the enforced intimacy of the past weeks, whether he liked or disliked this girl with her mannish straightforwardness and unfeminine ways. Still, he admired her devotion to her friend, and playing against her was a challenge. He had to work to beat her, whether at chess or cards. "If I could, I would order you and Hanajima-san to go home and sleep, as well. You'll do Tohru no good if you collapse from exhaustion."  
  
"Maybe you should lead us by example, then, instead of only leaving here to shower and shave and visit Akito." She said the name contemptuously, as she had ever since the accident.  
  
"There are things you do not know--" Hatori stopped when she snorted, and wondered again at how sweet, gentle Tohru came to be such good friends with this rough girl. "Still, I am a doctor, and better prepared for such a situation. You and Hanajima are still young--"  
  
"And so we're more than energetic enough to run rings around a decrepit old man like you." She laughed at the way his face tightened slightly. Two weeks of close contact let her interpret it, correctly, as pique. "Just shut up and deal the cards, jii-san."  
  
He pulled out a deck of cards and shuffled them, glancing at where Hanajima was reading quietly to Tohru. He missed the way that Uotani focused on his long fingers, as she had looked away before he turned back. They were mostly silent for a while, speaking only as the game necessitated.  
  
It wasn't until well after the breathing of the other two girls indicated sleep that the silence was broken, abruptly, by Hatori's voice. "How is it that you are such good friends with Tohru when you are nothing alike?"  
  
She looked at him assessingly, more like a rival businessman or a street punk than a proper lady. After a moment, she said, "How come you didn't fight for your girl?"  
  
His expression shifted instantly to the emotionless mask most people knew, the same one she had seen the first time she met him. It had softened somewhat in the late night hours they spent together, playing games and keeping watch. "What do you know about Kana?"  
  
"Was that her name? Tohru said you were deeply in love once, but you gave her up after she blamed herself for causing family trouble." She shrugged, dismissing his tragedy with a lazy movement of her too-broad shoulders.  
  
"That is... personal. You know nothing of the circumstances." He focussed on his cards, trying to remain calm and unaffected.  
  
Her smile was brittle, mocking. "And you know nothing of what's between me and Tohru, and it's very personal. I'm not the one who started with the nosy questions here."  
  
Hatori made a noise in his throat, somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. "Point taken." He picked up his cards and they resumed playing, silently. One of them would rise periodically to check on the patient, ut nothing was out of the ordinary.  
  
It was sometime in the early hours of the morning, when all the world was so dark and still that it seemed they were the only two people on earth, that Hatori spoke again. "I didn't fight for her because it would have hurt her beyond what she was capable of enduring."  
  
Uotani looked up from her cards. "Sounds like she was a wimp. You're probably better off."  
  
"Better off?" For all that it was in a whisper, Hatori's voice held the sting of a whip. He jerked his hair aside, displaying the eye that was slightly shrunken in its socket and completely clouded, the multitude of tiny, silvery scars around it almost forming a star pattern. "Is this better off? This is all I'm left with, when I was happy once."  
  
She looked at him coolly, unflinching in the face of a deformity that had made others pale and look away. That had made Kana look away, in shame and disgust. He dropped his hand and said bitterly, "I am only better off in knowing I did not buy my happiness at the expense of hers."  
  
"Gin." Uotani lay her cards down, then reached over and brushed his hair aside. He flinched at the warmth of her fingers as she traced the ridge of his brow and looked closely at his scars. Just when he didn't think he could tolerate it one second longer, she took her hand away and said, "Well you won't win any contests for being the prettiest anymore, but it doesn't hurt your looks all that much. Adds a bit of macho, makes you more handsome than pretty."  
  
He looked at her, open mouthed with shock. "Handsome? It's /grotesque/."  
  
She made a small humming noise, neither assenting or dissenting, then said, while dealing a new hand, "Have you ever noticed that one of Tohru's pinkies is crooked?"  
  
Hatori picked up his cards, trying to re-gather the shards of his impassive façade. "Yes, she said she broke it once."  
  
"I was broken by a metal pipe." Uotani calmly took a card and put another one down.  
  
"You broke it?" Hatori had seen the girl swinging the length of pipe in Kyou's direction once or twice, and had been reluctantly impressed at the ease with which she did so.  
  
"No, although it was mine. I'd been stupid and let my guard down. Got trapped in an alley without backup by some girl I had pissed off." She smiled grimly, the points of her canines just showing. "I'd insulted their leader's looks, you see."  
  
Her hand reached up, pulling her heavy bangs up and back. Hatori's breath hissed out as his physician's eye took in the mottled scarring that ran along her hairline, from above the ear to the temple. It had been a knife, but not a very sharp one, and one that had been carelessly applied. There must have been an infection of some sort, and it was obvious that the person doing the stitching had been unskilled, to say the least.  
  
"Tohru was walking home and saw me being dragged off. She didn't know who I was, but as soon as she had called out for help, she picked up my pipe from where I'd dropped it and rushed in." Uotani smiled faintly and dropped her hair before picking up her cards. "Your turn, doc."  
  
Hatori shook his head and looked at his cards, putting one down randomly and picking another up. "What happened?"  
  
"What do you think happened? Tohru tripped, skinned her knee, knocked down some trashcans and dropped the pipe on her own fingers. It's a mercy only the pinky was broken." She snorted and took her turn, gesturing for him to take his. "Still, it caused enough distraction that I ended up being the one with the knife."  
  
She didn't think that she would ever forget the sick feeling of plunging the knife into the stomach of the girl who had been intent on taking a scalp as a prize. She hadn't meant to cause that much damage, had been aiming for the girl's thigh, but the blood pouring down her forehead had gotten into her eyes. Her vision had blurred from the pain and the blood loss, and her instincts had been screaming for survival at all costs. She had watched, horrified, as the other girl had fallen away, the hands clutching her stomach not hiding the amount of dark blood pouring out. Uotani had stopped long enough to get the knife off the ground and to pick up her pipe before grabbing her rescuer and pushing them both out of the alley and down the street, no destination in mind but away.  
  
Two streets over, she had stopped to call an ambulance from a pay phone, just in case the others who had been with the wounded girl hadn't thought to. By the time she was done, the adrenaline that had been driving her was spent, and she had collapsed into a dead faint. "I woke up to see Kyoko, Tohru's mom, changing the bandage on my head. I would have been arrested if I had gone to the hospital, so Kyoko and Tohru took care of me."  
  
Hatori didn't know what to say, so he said nothing, merely going through the motions of the card game. After a few minutes, he said quietly, "You could get that fixed, you know. It might not disappear, but it would be considerably less--"  
  
"Grotesque?" He winced and she laughed, but not altogether unkindly. "Right now I'm pretty focused on keeping a roof over my head. As it is, I had to call in some favors to get the evening shift."  
  
"Evening shift? Do you mean to tell me you're juggling work as well as school and coming here?" Hatori was almost as horrified at that as he had been at her story.  
  
Uotani looked at him quizzically. "What does it matter to you what I do? I'm fine." She looked down at her cards and slapped them down. "Gin. Maybe you're the one overdoing it if I can beat you this badly."  
  
"Hm." Hatori watched absently as she shuffled the cards, his mind elsewhere.  
  
(More stuff would go here, but a sneak peek of the next scene:  
  
"You had no RIGHT! I needed that job, and you got me fired." His lip curled up slightly as he tossed her own words back at her. "You're probably better off." ) 


End file.
